Speeches
Pelosi Statement on Bipartisan Economic Stimulus Package
01/29/2008
Washington, D.C. -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke on the floor this afternoon stating her support for the bipartisan economic stimulus package. Below are her remarks:
“Thank you very
much, Mr. Speaker. I thank the
gentleman, Chairman Rangel, for his kind and generous remarks. I especially thank him for his tremendous
leadership, because under his leadership we are able today to vote on something
that is relevant to the lives of the American people. I commend Republican Leader John Boehner for
his leadership as well. It’s been a
privilege to work in a bipartisan way to help alieve the pain of the American
people.
“For a long time
now, homemakers, homeowners, and hard workers across
“On December 7, we
had a bipartisan meeting with leaders in the business community, economists,
leaders of industry, labor, and the academic community - representing workers
and the diversity of our country - and we talked about what we could do to head
off a serious downturn in our economy.
We knew from that meeting that it would have to be timely, that we would
need to act quickly; that it would have to be targeted, it would be targeted to
those who would put money in the pocket of hard-working Americans who would
immediately spend the money to meet their needs, inject demand into the
economy, to help create jobs; and it had to be temporary. The tax incentives in the package would have
to be such that they would have to be acted upon in this calendar year so that
the full impact could be felt for job creation and stimulus for the economy.
“Previous stimulus
packages have not had that. They had a
two year period of time in which the incentives would work and therefore they
lost impact. Previous stimulus packages
did not have a cap on who received the rebate or the tax cut, as Senator Baucus
calls it. And so therefore a lot of
money went to the hands of people who never really spent it or injected it back
into the economy. But this is
timely. We are acting quickly, not
hastily, and firmly in a disciplined way on a package that has as its one
criterion, for anything that’s in the package, is is it stimulus? Is it stimulus? And does it enable us to move in a timely
fashion, targeted, and temporary?
“I was pleased when
working with my colleague, Mr. Boehner, and the Administration, under the
leadership of Secretary Paulson, that we were able to come to terms on how we
would proceed. We could only do that
because of the extraordinary respect that Congressman Rangel, Chair of the
“So this has been
bipartisan in terms of committee, in terms of working together over time, and
bipartisan in terms of the leadership working together in a short time frame,
benefiting from the work that had gone before us.
“It’s important in
this package to have a level of discipline because of the features that the
economists, business leaders, labor leaders, et cetera told us in the course of
all of these discussions is that you don’t want to do anything to the stimulus
package that will hinder your ability to act in a recovery. So it’s important that this bill does not get
overloaded. I have a full agenda of
things I’d like to have in the package, but we have to contain the price, and
in doing so, you have to establish your priorities. And the priority we had was to put $28
billion dollars in the hand of 35 million families who had never received a
rebate or a child tax credit before, and to do it quickly. That was our priority. Because to do that, again, is true
stimulus. All the other things, while
worthy and important - again we made a decision because that’s where we could
find our common ground.
“But if we heap too
much on top of the package, it will then take us deeply into debt, and paygo is
important to us, and while in recession it will take a law to take certain
initiatives. You don’t want to abuse that
by, again, adding to the deficit for items in the package that are not strictly
timely, temporary, and targeted for stimulus.
“So I think we have
a good product here. It’s all a
compromise, it’s all about decisions and priorities that have to be
established. But it also speaks to the
fact that we need to work in a bipartisan way to have a very aggressive
initiative for job creation in our country.
And we’ve already laid the framework for that in a bipartisan way. We’ve had overwhelming votes in this
Congress, for example, on SCHIP, expanding health care to many more children in
America. Health care needs trained
professionals - every aspect of the delivery of health care - so it creates
good paying jobs in America when you expand health care accessibility to
Americans.
“Education,
innovation, all of those are about keeping us competitive, keeping us number
one, again, creating good paying jobs in America so that we prevail in the
workplace and the global market place.
When we talk about infrastructure, we must have a package for rebuilding
our roads, the highways, transit, taking initiatives for new projects as well,
creating good paying jobs in America. On global warming we as a generation, as
a Congress, will be judged on how we deal with the issue of the global climate
crisis. This affords us a whole new
world of job opportunity, where we’re all on the ground floor largely, where we
go into urban America, in our inner cities, where we go to rural America, and
create good paying green jobs that are new.
It’s about being entrepreneurial about this, to think in new and
difference ways. It’s about how our
decisions have to be seen in light of do they create good paying jobs in
America.
“So again, while we
stand ready to present a stimulus. If
need be, we want to, in a long term, longer term than a stimulus, create jobs
to avoid such a downturn, and in any event, raise the living standard of the
American people. And so whether it’s
about this rebate and what it means, these hard-working Americans who are
facing rising costs and need help to live paycheck to paycheck - and I’m
telling you that not just the working poor.
It is the middle class in America.
This is a middle-class tax rebate bill.
We call it the Recovery Rebate of Economic Stimulus for the American People
Act. It targets the middle class and
those who aspire to it. And for that
same middle class, we must have an ongoing aggressive initiative for job
creation across the board for America’s families to have the confidence that
they need, because in a downturn, what you need is confidence. You need consumer confidence, you need
confidence in the markets, and you need a message of confidence. And that’s what is given to the American
people when Members of Congress can work with the Administration in a bipartisan
way to put the American people first.
“I think it’s a good
day for us here and let’s hope for the Senate to take their lead from us and be
disciplined, focused, fiscally responsible, and act in a timely, temporary, and
targeted way on behalf of meeting the needs of the American people.”